


On And Off Again

by faultysfaux



Category: Donnie Darko (2001)
Genre: Allusions of Violence, Anxiety, Big Sis Elizabeth, Blackouts, Canonical Explicit Language, Disordered thinking, Donnie Whump, Gen, General Creepiness, Gun Violence, Hallucinations, Mental Breakdown, Psychological Illness, Schizophrenia, Sibling Love, alternative ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-16 19:09:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28961478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faultysfaux/pseuds/faultysfaux
Summary: Donnie breaks down before the end of the movie.
Relationships: Donnie Darko & Elizabeth Darko, Donnie Darko & Frank
Comments: 3
Kudos: 4





	On And Off Again

**Author's Note:**

> Well I really just hadn't found many stories for this awesome movie/character, so you know what that means; I just had to write something myself. This is centred around various forms of psychological illnesses so beware if anything from anxiety to self harming thoughts upsets you, don't read. No offence intended with any of these depictions either of course since I'm writing from a lot of personal experience.

Maybe it should have been harder for him to get a gun. To get at the gun. 

But it wasn't. 

And when he thinks about the very short walk to his parents room from his own he feels. . . disappointed. He could have easily gotten it sooner. He shouldn't have it at all. Why does he have it at all?

He had to. 

It would be smart to hide a gun in a drawer in his bedroom, in his closet, beneath his piled up sneakers and sweatshirts, in a box. In a goddamn sock! He should've hidden it. Why didn't he? 

He needed it with him. 

He struggled to know his own motivations. 

Walking home from school proved to be a display in missed consciousness when his feet hit the awakening - comforting - steps up to his front door, with a hard yet staticky block of grey, from the end of school bell to then, dragging along behind him. He had walked. And he had been thinking, but even those daydreams had disappeared when he realised his journey had gone; his stomach crawled to the back of his throat. 

Sometimes - most times - when people spoke to him - with him - he struggled not to let the grey blank absorb him completely. He could usually only parse out the bits that truly grabbed him, had his head grinding into gear, and when that happened it was hard for him to keep from cutting to his own point before it drifted and faded and he was left with fading all together. Sometimes he felt bad a few hours later, when he realised he missed what they were saying. Most times he worried he missed a lot, worried that the colourless non entity had eaten away what he did hear, and he had no choice but to make do with the pieces left over. 

'Mom and Dad took Sam over to the Conners' so they'll be gone for dinner.' 

'Hmm?' 

Donnie found himself standing over a glass of water on the kitchen table with Elizabeth looking up at him from a catalogue at the counter. 

'Oh, yeah. 'Kay,' he felt the tips of his fingers were wet enough that he had definitely poured the water himself. He picked it up to take a drink. 

'Well they won't be home for dinner, so.' 

He pulled a chair out to sit, and remembered sitting in English class too. He hadn't heard it. Most of it. He loved English class - compared to a lot of classes anyway - but nothing he did worked. 

'Y'know last time they stayed out til' two in the morning? Like we should be the parents.'

That fucking block of grey had climbed on top of him again. He had really tried. Like reading, and rereading the same few lines of a book just to try and take them in. Over and over. 

" _The theme suggests a deeper look at-. . ."_

_What?_

_"It's helpful to read over the refresher notes when your done-. . ."_

_Why?_

'Remember the look on Mom's face when we found her in the lawn chair-' 

_"Don't forget chapters six and seven for making points-. . ."_

_I can't remember._

'-and we were already dressed for school? Ha. We got free rides from her for a week-' 

_"For homework answer questions 1a skip b, do question 2 entirely -. . ."_

_What else?!_

'-just so we wouldn't tattle on her to Dad that she never even made it upstairs.' 

_"That's it for today. See you Wednesday."_

_F*ck._

He had tried damnit. How was he supposed to be doing school work if he couldn't even hear any of it, if he couldn't will his mind to focus for more than a few goddamn seconds at a time. 

'Do you remember that?' 

God, but he could hear Elizabeth perfectly well. Every fucking word was scraping against the inside of his skull, no matter what he thought of, he could probably gouge his ears full of his own fingers, blood and fingers clogging them up, and Elizabeth's voice would still make it in through it all. Not literary themes though. 

'Donnie.' 

'What?!' he almost shouted. 

Donnie found one of his hands buried in his hair as he sat hunched over a disgustingly, vividly plain placemat. He glanced at his sister to see her face twisted in worry, concern, fear, pity; it was all the same BS. 

'I asked if you were all right,' she said quietly. 

Well he hadn't heard her the first time. He twisted his hands into fists, and felt a sickening sting of pain along his scalp. 

'I'm. Fine.' 

He tried to release his death grip on his own various body parts. Fingers and hair. 

'Are you sure? You don't-' 

'Why is everyone always asking if I'm alright? I'm fine!' he couldn't get his own fingers to let go. He jumped back to his feet, and Elizabeth followed the movement. 

_Are you alright?_

_Are you okay?_

His hands fell to his sides. 

'I'm so fine I'm going to go do homework, so I don't end up working a shitty job at a craft store at any point in my life,' he said spitefully, without looking at his sister, and immediately left for the stairs. 

'. . . Fucking asshole!' 

If he hadn't been aware of the walk home, he found every moment of his getting to the door of his own room now a battle in over awareness. The stairs were long, and someone might be behind him. A hand could fit through the slats on the banister. The bathroom was a minefield too. Someone behind the door. Something could crawl out of the mirror. The darkness of the evening hid awful things in dark corners, and the upstairs hallway produced a misery in horribly constructed voyeurism. When he was little he used to make someone come with him. When he was little he would scream, and cry in fear of all the 'things' only he could see, and think of happening to him when he went upstairs alone. 

It was - always - almost enough to make him want to run back to Elizabeth, and ask her to walk with him on the long trek. To hold his hand like when they were small. 

He just walked. And ignored it. He never stopped seeing things, but life stopped letting him cry about it. 

He took even breaths as he let himself into his bedroom, and didn't react to the hand that grabbed his arm. It wasn't there. 

He finished his homework with eyes on his back, and by the end of it he felt like crying. His throat so tight he could barely breath, heart pushed to the limit of panic. It would be good to find Elizabeth, and just stand around her, even if she was mad. 

He turned around. 

Frank was standing in the middle of his room. 

Donnie jolted back, but hardly moved with his desk digging into him. He took deliberate sidesteps to get his back against a wall. 

Frank didn't move. He never did. It just felt a lot like he might. Very quickly. Donnie preferred when he could only hear him. 

They stared at one another. 

**_Soon_ **

Donnie was never surprised when Frank spoke, it was more like he had already spoken a long time ago, and Donnie was only remembering it then. The words an echo you never heard the cause of. 

Frank looked horrible. Donnie almost laughed aloud. He had done at his therapist's office when he had described Frank to her, and she had told him he was only Donnie's imagination. Laughed at the thought his mind had come up with something so horrifying. 

**_Soon Donnie_ **

His fur looked like it might have been rotting. Or the thing beneath the fur was. Donnie could almost smell it. Death. He had found dead animals with his friends before. A tear made its way out, but he kept his eyes wide just in case; Cassie. 

'What do you want?' 

**_It will happen soon_ **

Another tear fell. 

'No.' 

**_Donnie_ **

There was a shelf to Donnie's right, and he could easily grab _something_ to throw without looking away. 

'How soon, hmm?' 

Sometimes he didn't speak at all. 

It wouldn't be enough. His chest was aching, his eyes were burning, his hands were cold, and his face was a numb prickling wash of heat. 

'How soon?!' his voice broke. 

There were paws on his face, matted rough fur smearing his tears, the smell right in his skin, he could feel the fingers pressing through. 

Frank was standing in the middle of the room, and Donnie pulled the gun from the back of his waistband. 

**_Donnie_ **

'No!' 

He couldn't see a way around, couldn't even imagine a way out then, images of being grabbed, crushed tight at every angle pervaded his thoughts. In fact his room had lost most of its space, the back walls, and door faded to a fuzzy blackness. Non existent. 

There's was sound, but there wasn't, though he knew somewhere it was all terrible, and anguished screaming, he hardly existed himself for all the pain he felt. He knew he was in pain. Or maybe someone else was. 

The only thing that connected him to that spot in all of time, and being, and thought, and reality was the gun heavy in his hand, weighting his arm into a bend, hard edged as he crushed his fingers around it. He was on the edge of a great overhang, and this was his only handhold. The one point that separated him from life, and death - it was rotting underneath, he just knew it. The only thing he knew was real, and he was trapped, about to die. He couldn't remember if he was about be mauled, or gutted, or crushed, or dropped, or suffocated. He felt like he was being suffocated, and the only thing he had a hold of was being /pulled/ away. 

_Donnie!_

**_It will all end_ **

He didn't want to die. 

He had never heard something so loud before, he thought of a carnival carousel hitting the ground from a height; the house around him might as well have split in half. 

And he could see again. His room. That's where he was. And he realised he was yelling out. 

But that hardly mattered for the sudden hands all over his arm. Frank wasn't there, but he was shoved to the floor, and his hands were empty again. Nothing to hold on to. 

'Donnie! God, please!' 

Elizabeth loomed over him. He registered he was _still_ yelling, and tried to stop. His sister was right in front of his face, and she looked terrified. _He was still yelling things_. He couldn't breath for it. 

'No, no! Stop! No! No! I don't-' 

'Donnie! C'mon Donnie! Please.' 

He tried to take a breath. 

And between everything he started to sob, his tears falling thick and fast. His bedroom was barely lit by the moon filtering poorly through his blind, and Elizabeth was only about an inch from his face, but it didn't matter. None of it mattered?

_How soon?_

'God, Donnie. Its- It's okay. Shhhh. Fuck.'

The grey wasn't grey, it was black and white like a light flicking on and off.

It was Elizabeth's arms around him. Elizabeth. They were alone. Just Elizabeth.

His chest seized again, he let more sounds escape him. Just Elizabeth, holding him even though he was taller than she was now. He didn't like it, managing to wrap his own arms down around his torso between them. Just. Elizabeth. Not Frank. Elizabeth. Elizabeth. Not something. And he had to stop making noises at some point, or he wouldn't hear if someone else was in the room.

'Donnie? Shit, are you okay? Are you hurt? Fuck, fuck! Donnie.'

'-Elizabeth.'

'Oh Thank fuck. Donnie. It's- God. What we're you thinking, what- where did you even get that. Fuck.'

The light went on, the light went off, and then came back on again.

Elizabeth had them backed up against his wall now and he was slumped side ways across her lap. His own hands hadn't come away from his sides yet, he tried to move his fingers, there was pain in flexing them from their death grip he was certain.

'Donnie? Shhhh, it's okay, Mom and Dad should be back soon. It's okay.'

He noticed his sister was rocking them slightly, her hand running through his hair, what else could it be? Harsh clawed pats petting him, dragging along his scalp, leaving bits of decay behind. He knew he had fallen silent, because a moan escaped his throat then when he winced, and reached up to grasp his fringe himself.

'Hey, Donnie? Are you- can you hear me Donnie?' It sounded like Elizabeth was crying herself, _had he been crying?_

He managed a groan in response, he felt so worn out.

'Great. That's. . . good. Donnie, do you remember what. . . Look, Mom and Dad are gonna be back soon all right? Everything's fine. You're okay.' Her hand continued it's ministrations, but this time soothing over his own too where his digits had once again refused to let go of something they had a hold of.

Was he okay? His head hurt. His eyes were dry and sore. He was going to die.

'Elizabeth.'

'Its okay. Just wait and- and Mom and Dad will be back soon.'

Nobody knew. He was so tired but suddenly his eyes weren't dry, and he could speak again. His room lay in front of him, wide and expansive, his door was left open, the gun was just visible in the din. 

'No.'

The rocking stilled for all of a moment before it continued, along with Elizabeth's soothing words.

'Shhhh. It's okay. Just wait a while longer all right.'

She didn't know, and even though he was sure no one else could pick up the gun, he knew he had to. He had to. It was important.

'It's not okay.'

'Please, Donnie, just rest okay? You're all right.'

'It's all gonna end, and I don't wanna die.' The rocking stopped. 'Elizabeth.' Her hand kept up it's steady pace, back and forth through his hair. 'I-I don't wanna die alone.'

Anything could walk through that door. Anyone.

He could feel her chest rise and fall against his shoulder like she was taking big, slow, deep breaths. The light was on.

'I'm right here Donnie, don't be-' Deep breath, '-don't be such a dipshit. Okay? You're not gon-' Deep breath, 'You're okay. You're okay.'

Back and forth. Anything could walk in.

'It's not okay,' he found his view of the room fogged, his throat ached. 'It's all going to end.' He could barely breath. The rocking started again.

'I'm right here.' Her hand pulled his own away from his hair roots, then held on to it. His fingers gripped onto the only thing they could. 'Mom and Dad will be back soon.' He held on.

**_How soon_ **

**Author's Note:**

> Poor Donnie, but the allusions and ending in the film aren't much happier. Thanks for reading! Always appreciate a comment/review if you've got the time, even if this story is twelve years old. Hope you have a good rest of the day!


End file.
